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District courthouses in Baltimore join list of facilities with Legionella bacteria
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Two district court buildings have joined a growing list of government facilities in Baltimore where water system tests have found Legionella bacteria, which can cause a rare and severe form of pneumonia.
District Court of Maryland courthouses in northwest Baltimore and in Brooklyn will be closed over the weekend for the state to flush and sanitize their water systems.
Test results from Wednesday showed that water in the facilities, which also house offices for the state’s attorney, the public defender, and parole and probation workers, contained the bacteria.
The Maryland Department of General Services began proactively testing the water in state office buildings in mid October, beginning with the State Center complex in Baltimore where about 4,300 state employees from a variety of agencies work.
DGS officials plan to regularly test the water at state facilities, “as many state-owned buildings are old and facing deteriorating maintenance issues,” spokesman Eric Solomon said in a recent statement. The U.S. General Services Administration began similar testing for federal buildings in January.
Solomon said the department is providing bottled drinking water to employees working in the affected facilities and has advised them to not drink the water. Using the tap water to flush toilets and wash hands poses a low risk, he said.
RELATED: MD to move 620 workers from State Center as revamp planning resumes
Despite the bacteria’s presence, there have been no reported cases of Legionnaires’ disease, the illness that can result from Legionella exposure, Solomon said.
Test results on Nov. 8 showed that Legionella bacteria was in two State Center buildings, prompting DGS to briefly close the facilities.
The state has since found the bacteria in other buildings in the complex. The state Department of Health’s offices at 201 W. Preston St. were closed Wednesday to service the water systems, and the state Department of Labor’s facilities down the road at 1100 N. Eutaw St. are scheduled to close on Friday.
Legionella can cause Legionnaires’ disease, a rare and severe form of pneumonia, and can spread in the plumbing and HVAC systems of large buildings.
In recent months, the bacteria has been found at 200 St. Paul Place in Baltimore, a downtown office building that houses the Maryland Attorney General’s Office (and The Daily Record, among other companies).
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had to close its headquarters in Woodlawn for about two months after a Legionella detection, and the Social Security Administration’s headquarters just down the road turned off water fixtures because of the bacteria’s presence, according to an August report from the Federal News Network, which caters to federal agency managers.
The bacteria can be common in office buildings, according to a 2022 study published in the National Library of Medicine.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency researchers testing facilities nationwide reported finding the bacteria in hot water samples from 16 of the 30 office buildings they tested and in 25 of the 70 residential facilities they tested.
The researchers also found that while an office building’s age wasn’t a statistically significant predictor of contamination, its size was.
The U.S. General Services Administration also found elevated levels of Legionella in about a quarter of the 1,400 buildings for which it received data, according to an August report.
Daily Record reporter Ian Round contributed to this report.
